The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

Constantina not only encouraged this criminal conduct, but enlarged on it. A woman of vicious character came one day to disclose some plot, or pretended plot, to her. She rewarded her heavily, and sent the harlot out into the city in the royal chariot, to encourage others. An Alexandrian noble distinguished himself by resisting the guilty passion of his mother-in-law. The woman presented Constantina with a pearl necklace, and the noble was put to death. We need not prolong the disgusting narrative. Flavia Julia Constantina, a beautiful and able woman, who can scarcely have passed her thirtieth year, was one of the worst Empresses in the Imperial gallery. One can but suggest, in some attenuation of her guilt, that the murder of her husband by her brother when she was a young girl in her early teens, and the fourteen years of young widowhood that followed, had provoked the worst elements of her nature.

As long as Constantius was occupied with the struggle against Magnentius, he overlooked the excesses of his Cæsar and his sister in the East. His opponent, Magnentius, was not so compliant, though he wasted no legions in an effort to dethrone him. He sent a soldier to assassinate Gallus and seduce the troops. As the man resided, however, in a tavern near Antioch, he became less cautious over his cups, and boasted to his associates of his mission. The old woman who kept the tavern seemed too far removed from politics to be taken into account, but she promptly denounced her guest at the palace, and he was put to death. Then Magnentius fell, and committed suicide, and Constantius turned to consider the scandalous conduct of his viceroy and his sister.

Constantius proceeded, as he usually did whenever it was possible, by craft instead of force. The Prefect of the East had been slain by the people of Antioch, with the guilty connivance of Gallus, and a new Prefect, named Domitian, was sent to Antioch, together with the Prefect of the Palace, Montius. Domitian had orders to secure, by the most tactful and seductive means, that Gallus should visit Italy, and walk into the pit dug for him. He was, however, a sturdy officer, more sensible of the just substance than the form of his instructions. Gallus and Constantina were at once insulted because, on the day of his arrival, he drove insolently past the gate of the palace, and went straight to his villa. They then condescended to invite him to the palace. In the presence of the hated rulers he laid aside all pretence of diplomacy, and roughly ordered the Cæsar to proceed at once to Italy, or incur the just resentment of the Emperor. Gallus, stung by his insolence, at once gave the Prefect into the custody of the soldiers. Montius, who was present, and who also had lost all feeling for diplomacy in the passionate encounter, remonstrated with Gallus, adding the taunt that a man who had no power to dismiss one of his magistrates had no right to imprison a Prefect of the East. We are assured by Philostorgius that Constantina flew at the official, dragged him from the tribunal, and pushed him into the hands of the guard. We may prefer the more sober version of Ammianus. Gallus impetuously called upon the troops and the people of Antioch to defend their ruler, and they responded with surprising alacrity. The distinguished officers of Constantius were bound hand and foot, dragged through the streets until the last spark of life was extinct, and then flung into the river.

Still Constantius hesitated to enter upon a civil war with the East, and the unscrupulous cunning which dictated his policy discovered an alternative procedure. First, the commander of the cavalry in the East was summoned to Milan, that the danger of a rising might be lessened. Then, a series of letters, couched in the most friendly and mendacious terms, were sent to the Cæsar. Constantius was eager to see his beloved sister once more, and to confer with his Cæsar. For some time they resisted the invitation, but at length Constantina, less apprehensive of personal injury, set out for Italy. She died on the journey, at Cœnum in Bithynia, of fever, and her remains were buried at Rome. She was still in her early thirties at the time of her death. The single deed that is recorded in praise of her is that she and Gallus planted a Christian church in the dissolute grove of Daphne, and drew the austerity of the new faith upon that region of sensuous superstition and sensual license. Her share in that act of piety may be put in the scale against her avarice, cruelty, selfishness, and unbridled temper.

The fate of her husband may be briefly recorded. Lured at length by the deceitful professions of Constantius, he set out for Milan with his princely retinue. As soon as he reached Europe, the retinue was brushed aside, and he discovered himself a captive. When the little party arrived in Pannonia, he was stripped of the purple, and conducted to the remote prison at Pola, where Crispus had been executed. There he was “tried” by a eunuch of Constantius’s court, and within a few days a breathless courtier—he had ridden several horses to death—rushed into the presence of Constantius with the shoes of the slain Cæsar. The Empire was reunited under Constantius, at a cost of the deaths of twenty princes and princesses of his house and their dependents, and fifty thousand soldiers; and the eunuchs and courtiers filled the palace at Milan with the incense they offered to the young conqueror.

Constantius had, meantime, married again, and a more worthy and commanding Empress engages our attention. Toward the close of his struggle with Magnentius, in the year 352 or the beginning of 353, the Emperor married a Macedonian lady, Aurelia Eusebia, of remarkable beauty, no little ability, and dignified personality. Her father and brothers had had consular rank in their province; her mother had been distinguished for the propriety of her conduct and the careful rearing of her children after the death of her husband. The language in which the Emperor Julian describes her is enhanced by gratitude, and enjoys the license of a panegyric; some would say that it is warmed by a more tender sentiment. But Ammianus, who also knew her, pronounces that the beauty of her character was not less splendid than that of her form, and, beyond a peevish complaint of a later writer that she did not confine herself to the proper and restricted sphere of a woman, she maintains her high repute among the conflicting writers of the time. The one grave imputation, which Ammianus seems to find quite consistent with his superlative praise of her, we will consider later.

We find Eusebia established in the court at Milan at the time when the heads of the last of Constantius’s rivals are falling. When Gallus has disappeared, he proudly takes the title of “Lord of the World,” and endeavours to live up to it, amid his company of eunuchs and fawning attendants. In the hands of those astute and concordant schemers the weak and vain monarch was easily persuaded to arrive at decisions which he attributed to his own judgment, and it is, perhaps, the most indulgent plea that we can make for him that he was governed by a power so subtle and insinuating that he never perceived it. The high merit of a scrupulous chastity is claimed for him; but the monastic writer Zonaras somewhat detracts from this by affirming that his coldness deprived him of a dynasty and forced his beautiful and accomplished wife into a fatal decline. His piety, at least, might be praised; but it rested on a basis of Arian creed and is exposed to the scorn of the orthodox, who called him Antichrist.

We may concur in the strictures of Zonaras so far as to admit that Eusebia cannot have been happy in his court. The eunuch Eusebius, who had tried and executed Gallus, was the most powerful man in the Empire. Ammianus observes, with heavy irony, that Constantius was believed to be not without influence with his emasculated chamberlain. A hierarchy of lesser, but hardly less corrupt, officials led up to this favoured minister, and Ammianus, from personal acquaintance with the court, assures us that their rapacity and unscrupulousness grew with the power of Constantius. A Persian officer, Mercurius, had the nickname of “The Count of Dreams,” from the skill with which he could make the most innocent fancies of the night bear a treasonable complexion, and bring destruction and spoliation on the dreamer. Paulus, who had risen from the lowly position of table-steward, was called “The Chain,” because of the art with which he could involve a man in a charge of plotting. Torture and confiscation became common experiences once more, and men began to shrink from even the most innocent conversation.

This unpleasant tenor of the Imperial life at Milan was relieved by the great controversy of the Arians and Athanasians, which was brought to Italy for decision. How Constantius and his officers induced the Latin bishops to condemn Athanasius, in 355, by “stroking their bellies instead of laying the rod on their backs,” to use the vigorous phrase of St. Hilary, does not concern us, but it is interesting to see how Eusebia came in contact with the prelates. When the Roman bishop, Liberius, bravely—for a time—incurred exile rather than condemn Athanasius, Eusebia sent him a sum of money. He returned it with the suggestion that her husband might find it useful for his troops or his Arian bishops. A new power, besides that of eunuchs, was rising. Suidas preserves a story that may be given here, though it may or may not refer to this Council. As the bishops, he says, came to the town where the court was, for the purpose of holding a Council, they called to salute the Empress. Leontius, Bishop of Tripoli, refused to visit her, and she sent word that, if he would call, she would give him the funds to build a large church. The saintly prelate replied that he would condescend to visit her if he were assured that she would receive him with fitting respect—if, he explained, she would rise from her throne at his entrance, bend for his benediction, and remain standing, while he sat, until he permitted her to resume her seat.

In the same year (355), however, a more pleasant diversion alleviated the weariness of Eusebia, and another Empress is introduced to our notice. We have already said that the unhappy Gallus had for companion in his Cappadocian jail a young half-brother of the name of Julian. Imbibing his early culture at the alternate hands of Bishop Eusebius and the philosophical eunuch Mardonius, Julian had come to prefer the Greek culture of the latter to the theological lore of the prelate. He had come out untainted from the lonely fortress at Macellum, and had passed to Constantinople and then to Nicomedia. There the distinguished pagan Libanius attracted his allegiance, and from the three years in which he studied at Nicomedia his mind was wholly given to the older culture, however much he might be compelled to dissemble his aversion for the new religion. After the execution of Gallus he was brought to Milan. With growing apprehension he awaited the decision of “the eunuch, chamberlain, and cook” who, he says, directed the bloody counsels of Constantius. But he found an unexpected and powerful friend in the Empress.